Shadows of Anarchy
by general zargon
Summary: Ryou was just in Chicago for a simple Duel Monsters tournament, but when a late-night snack run turns into an all expenses paid trip to the Shadow Realm with a woman he's never met, he knew that things had turned far from simple as they could get. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: This idea would NOT leave me alone, and so I bend to the will of the plot bunnies once more. This is my first time writing anything like this, so please go easy on me!_

**Shadows of Anarchy**

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><p>Ryou Bakura had just known that leaving his Chicago hotel room in the middle of the night to go and get something to eat had been a bad idea.<p>

He had developed a sixth sense for trouble after receiving the Millennium Ring, and that sense had stayed with him even after the Spirit of the Ring had gone to the afterlife, and it had told him the minute he had left his room to walk right back inside and try to find something besides late night talk shows to watch.

Unfortunately, his growling stomach (he's skipped dinner because of jet lag) had won the battle and so he'd exited the Sunlight* Hotel and walked down the block to the McDonalds to grab a burger and maybe something to drink before going back to his room.

Somehow his plans had been derailed sometime between getting his food and getting back to his hotel room.

He still wasn't entirely sure how he wound up crouched behind a parked mini-van clutching his take-out bag and watching as a woman used some sort of staff to launch fireballs at what seemed to be some type of troll (they actually reminded him of the Giant Orc card, but he didn't take too long to dwell on _that_ comparison).

Instead, he tried to figure out if he should run for his life, stay and watch the fight, or try and help the woman who was obviously getting tired. He was rather embarrassed that he actually had to stop and think about his options, but his sense of self-preservation, honed from years of living with the spirit of a volatile thief who tended to possess his body with no advance warning, wouldn't let him just rush in to try and help some strange woman who could hurl fireballs.

The decision was taken out of his hands, however, when troll reinforcements arrived and noticed him (or just smelled his food, which was rapidly getting cold) hiding behind the mini-van. The aforementioned vehicle didn't escape the resulting mayhem unscathed (actually, it was reduced to something that looked like it came out of a trash compactor) but Ryou was relieved that he had noticed the trolls just a minute before they noticed him, as that gave him enough time to run like all the demons of the underworld were at his heels while the trolls pummeled the mini-van into scrap metal.

For some reason, the troll reinforcements chose to chase after _him_ instead of joining the other trolls in trying to catch the fireball-throwing woman. Maybe they thought that he was there to help her?

In any event, Ryou had to use sheer force of will to keep from screaming like a little girl as he sprinted down the street and headed back to his room. In the back of his mind, it occurred to him that leading the things back to where he was staying probably wasn't the best idea he ever had, but at the moment he didn't care.

And to think, he'd thought the weird occurrences would end after the Ring was buried somewhere in North Africa. Apparently he had been very, very wrong.

The former holder of the Ring of a Thousand Years just barely resisted the urge to shriek as he heard the pounding of the trolls' footsteps getting closer. He spotted his hotel just a few yards away, and he had never thought he would be as glad to see any building as he was to see the Sunlight Hotel right then.

Sadly, his luck chose that moment to run out as the sidewalk in front of him exploded. Quite spectacularly too, he dazedly noted right before a piece of asphalt the size of a golf-ball clocked him in the temple and he fell to the ground, groaning as his vision swam and something wet slid down the side of his face. All things considered, he managed to think through the pain, it was surprising that he was still conscious, let alone aware that the trolls were only a few feet away now…

Ryou really could have done without knowing that last part.

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><p>Molly Carpenter hissed a curse that would have made her mother wash her mouth out with soap as she aimed her blasting rod at another troll and sent a ball of fire at it. Unfortunately, her fire spells, not to mention her power, were nowhere near as good as her Master's and so the fire didn't really do much accept give the troll some mild burns that the monster easily ignored.<p>

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor and that she wanted to live to fight another day, the apprentice prepared to turn and run like heck to Harry's office in order to get behind its' magical wards that would hopefully keep the trolls out, only to be pulled up short when she saw a white-haired woman run from behind a mini-van.

'Just what I need, a senior citizen seeing me throwing fire spells around!' And she was pretty sure that that was what the woman had seen, though she also noticed that the other woman was being chased by yet more trolls. Molly groaned, following the whitette's lead and running down the block (for an old woman, she was pretty spry) and away from the pissed off trolls, and she had to wonder wildly exactly _why_ trolls were attacking her in the first place!

Really, she hadn't _meant_ to run into trouble, she had just been woken up by a bad dream that manifested as a sick feeling in her stomach and decided to take a walk to clear her head…a walk that resulted in her flinging mediocre fire spells at a horde of attacking trolls.

She was starting to think that Harry's luck was rubbing off on her.

It finally occurred to her to throw up a veil to try and confuse the trolls enough for her to get some breathing room, but before she could follow thought with action, she tripped and went sprawling. Something that might have just saved her life, Molly decided as a fireball (much stronger than the ones _she _used, she noted sourly) went flying through where her head had been moments before and impacted with the sidewalk in front of where the white-haired woman had been running.

As she pushed herself to her feet to run over to where the other woman had fallen, still clutching her blasting rod in her hand, the realization that trolls couldn't use fire spells smacked her over the head…which meant that there was a wizard apparently helping the trolls. Just great, she mentally moaned as she urged the burning muscles in her legs to go faster.

She managed to reach the downed woman right before the first troll of the reinforcements, and she did the first thing that came to mind when she saw the troll raise his foot to kick her: she raised her blasting rod and let loose a fireball right into its' ugly face.

The troll staggered back into another of the approaching creatures, creating a kind of domino effect and buying her precious few seconds to encourage the other woman (who, now that Molly was able to get a good look at her, wasn't an old woman at all) to sit up so they could start running again. The bleeding wound on the whitette's temple worried her though, as she pulled the young woman into a sitting position.

Unfortunately the trolls had recovered, and the hidden wizard had decided now would be a good time to hurl another fireball at them.

Molly looked up when the area got suspiciously brighter, and her blue eyes widened at the sight of the incoming flames. She gulped, mentally saying a final prayer before futilely throwing herself over the other woman just before the fire hit.

She had the faint thought that the white-haired woman's chest was oddly flat before everything went black…

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><p>* - Just a random name I thought of off the top of my head.<p>

**Author's Note: Molly's in for a surprise isn't she? ;) LOL! That seemed like a pretty good place to end the first chapter, and don't worry, you'll find out some of what happened to Ryou and Molly in the next chapter! Just so you're warned, updates on this will probably be few and far between unless inspiration hits me over the head with a two-by-four. Please R&R and tell me what you think! Constructive criticism is welcome!**


	2. Chapter 2

_Author's Note: And here is chapter 2! Also, let the misunderstandings continue!_

**Shadows of Anarchy**

…_Ryou blinked when the fireball-throwing blonde woman appeared in his field of vision and started trying to help him sit up. Dazed though he was, he was aware enough to know that there was very little chance of him actually getting to his feet in time to avoid being stepped on or otherwise killed._

_Still, he made an effort to help the blonde and he actually managed to get into a sitting position. Unfortunately it was too little, too late, as the trolls recovered from having a fireball thrown into their faces._

_The former holder of the Ring swallowed thickly, one eye closing to avoid getting blood in it, not that it would matter much longer, and took a second to pray that he wouldn't run into Bakura in the afterlife._

_As if the trolls weren't bad enough, Ryou somehow noticed the area around him and the woman getting brighter, and he felt a curious sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach when he saw the fireball coming towards him._

'_Really? The trolls weren't enough?' was what ran through his mind, the thought oddly lucid as he watched the fire approach, somehow unable to shut the one eye that he had open._

_The blonde woman threw herself over him, and he would be the first to admit that that took courage, even if it wouldn't do any good. He was almost resigned to his fate of being barbequed when, unnoticed by him and the fireball-thrower and the other creatures around, his shadow deepened and grew larger than even the light of the approaching flames could explain._

_He did notice when the darkness of his shadow rose up around him and the woman on top of him, even though he only distantly registered that the shadow looked vaguely familiar as his vision went black and he fell into the darkness of unconsciousness…_

Ryou groaned softly as a beam of light penetrated his eyelids and forced him to regain consciousness, and though he had difficulty opening his eyes (especially the eye on the side where he had gotten hit with a chunk of asphalt) he managed it after several minutes. As he blinked furiously in an attempt to get used to the sudden change of light, his first action was to roll over so that the sun wasn't shining directly into his sensitive orbs…

Wait, the sun? It had been nighttime when he had gotten into the middle of that woman-and-troll fight!

The eighteen year-old* whitette's eyes widened as he was fully catapulted into the waking world, and he jackknifed into a sitting position, something he regretted immediately afterwards as his head vehemently protested the sudden movement. Through the raging pain in his head, he registered the fact that he was still holding a surprisingly intact McDonald's take-out bag.

Would wonders ever cease? He was attacked by trolls, nearly blown up, and he apparently still had a cold hamburger and a diet coke to look forward to.

Ryou sighed, the pain in his head, centered on his temple, receding just enough that he could focus and look around and try to find out where exactly he was.

From what he could see, he was in some kind of palace**, the outer entrance if the glaring sun was any indication. Columns lined the sides of the room, sunlight filtering between them, and two large obelisks stood at the end of the chamber, a massive bowl between them containing what looked like a bonfire. He couldn't bring himself to look more closely at his surroundings, as the bright light wasn't doing his headache any favors.

The former holder of the Millennium Ring set the take-out bag next to him and braced himself on his hands as he finished taking stock of where he was and the condition he was in. A tentative touch of his temple revealed that the wound had stopped bleeding and the blood had dried, but it still hurt like no tomorrow and the dried blood was bound to start flaking and itching soon.

He was _not _looking forward to that...

A soft moan drew his attention to the previously unnoticed body sprawled next to him, and closer inspection revealed the features of the fire-hurling blonde woman.

Ryou sighed softly, his head still pounding, and he somehow knew that this wasn't going to be an easy explanation.

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><p>Molly moaned again as the apprentice wizard began slowly fighting her way back from the depths of unconsciousness, marveling as she did so at the fact that she <em>could <em>regain consciousness.

Since the last thing she remembered was a huge fireball hurtling towards her and the white-haired woman, she had the faint hope that maybe Harry Dresden, her wizarding mentor, had showed up and saved them just in time. It only took her opening her eyes to dash that hope, however, since last time she checked Harry didn't own anything close to a palace.

The stone beneath her was a sandy color, as were the surrounding columns, and the blinding sunlight was, well, _blinding_.

She squinted against the sunlight and raised one hand to shade her eyes as she looked around, her blue eyes immediately landing on the whitette sitting next to her a few feet away, and now that she was clearly able to see the other woman's injuries she winced in sympathy. Having had a little experience with them herself, she knew that head wounds hurt like a bitch and could cause all sorts of problems.

Molly pushed herself up to her knees, sparing a moment to be grateful that she'd decided to wear jeans when she'd went for her late-night walk instead of a skirt…wait, late _night_. 'Night' being the key word, so why was the sun shining brightly enough to sear her corneas if she wasn't careful? She couldn't possibly have been unconscious for that long, could she?

Worry about lost time later, she told herself firmly, first thing to do was make sure the other woman was alright, find out the whitette's name, and then figure out where the heck they were.

Hopefully in that order, she thought to herself.

The apprentice wizard shuffled over so that she could get a good look at the wound on the young woman's temple, saying as she did so, "Um, hey, my name's Molly Carpenter, and I guess the first thing I should do is say 'sorry I got you attacked by trolls'?" She tried to put a joking smile on her face, but the expression fell short of the mark.

And, still put off by the injury-induced headache and used to speaking in Japanese, Ryou forgot a crucial piece of information as he muttered, "Ah, my name is Bakura Ryou…" Yes, he forgot that family names came second when introducing yourself in English. And by the time he remembered, it was too late.

Molly nodded thoughtfully, taking a moment to look over the whitette ('_Bakura, huh? Not very feminine, but then again maybe names were different wherever she was from…_') both to check for any injuries she might have missed and to get her first good look at the other woman.

She had to admit that Bakura was an attractive woman, with her oddly beautiful, spiky white hair, pale skin, and wide green eyes. The whitette was wearing a pair of light blue jeans, worn yet comfortable looking sneakers, and a pale cream shirt, that Molly could just barely make out, underneath her soft gray jacket which had been zipped up almost all the way.

The wizard-in-training also took a moment to mull over the white-haired woman's voice, which was soft, polite, and gentle but at the same time strangely deep. She shrugged that thought off and concentrated on what was more important, namely field-dressing Bakura's head injury and hoping that the other woman didn't have a concussion.

After digging through her pockets and coming up with nothing besides lint, a piece of string, and her blasting rod which she had somehow managed to keep hold of, she was forced to conclude that she would likely have to sacrifice a part of her shirt for something to bandage Bakura's – now thankfully clotted – head wound. Suiting action to thought, she sat back on her heels and spared no time in tearing the bottom of her t-shirt into two-inch wide strips. She only stopped after she had torn up half her shirt, leaving her belly exposed.

Molly snickered when she looked up and saw Bakura looking away with a red flush on her face, and she quickly concluded that the other woman was shy.

Several minutes later, and she finished tying the knot to hold the bandage in place over the other woman's injury, but she felt sorry that she couldn't do anything about the dried blood on the side of Bakura's hair, and she winced in sympathy when she saw that part of the whitette's hair was stained with the crimson liquid.

Come to think of it, Bakura wasn't the only one who could use a shower, the blonde thought as she shifted into a more comfortable position and sat back to admire her handiwork. Sure, the bandage wasn't the neatest job ever, but at least it got the job done!

Molly glanced around and asked aloud, not really directing it to anyone, "Where the heck are we?"

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><p>*- Seemed like a good age, especially since it meant that some time has passed since the Ring got buried.<p>

**- Mausoleum of the Emperor field spell card. Its effect isn't really important though.

**Author's Note: And the Molly's confusion over Ryou's gender continues! I'm having fun with that little misunderstanding! :D Next chapter you get even more information about what happened, so please be patient while I battle the crazed plot bunnies! Please R&R and tell me what you think! Constructive criticism is welcome!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Shadows of Anarchy**

Ryou blinked at Molly's question, reaching up a hand to idly touch the makeshift bandage around his head and examine the young woman's work while he looked around and answered honestly, "I have no idea…" although, the two obelisks on either side of the bonfire/torch _did_ look rather familiar to him for some reason…

His head throbbed, cutting through that line of thought and causing him to wince as he lowered his hand from where it had been prodding the bandage. For some reason, the thought that it was going to be hell getting the dried blood out of his hair ran clearly through his mind, and he made a face at the random thought.

Thanks to his experience with food fights in high school and misadventures with various paints when he'd been a child, he was very aware that his hair was incredibly susceptible to coloring.

The former holder of the Ring shook his head minutely when Molly turned to look around the sand-colored building, and he found himself praying for an aspirin or an ice pack, either one would work. Sadly, it didn't look like he would get either one anytime soon (especially the ice, seeing as it looked like they were stuck in a desert) so he would just have to bear with it until the pain in his head died down.

Ryou blinked when a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he tried to discretely turn his head towards it. Unfortunately, the wound on his temple chose that moment to protest the movement quite vehemently, and so he winced, one eye closing unconsciously, for a minute before he looked back towards where he'd seen the flicker.

There was nothing there, not that he'd really expected there to be.

He resisted the urge to groan and instead looked back at Molly, who had turned in a complete circle in the time it had taken him to turn his head to the side, and asked her, speaking softly to avoid rousing his headache even further, "Excuse me, why were those…_trolls_ chasing you?"

Idly scratching the side of his face, he grimaced when some of the dried blood flaked off, feeling an itching and pulling sensation on the side of his face. He found himself longing for a shower, but he forcefully pushed the dried blood from his mind and focused on the blonde woman as she started to speak, looking rather awkward as she did so, "Well, you see, I was taking a walk when they jumped me, but luckily-"

Ryou interrupted her and finished the sentence, "You were able to throw fire and get away until the giant fireball came out of nowhere?" He noticed that Molly flinched at the mention of her throwing fireballs, and he had to wonder about that reaction. Although, given how he was used to keeping his own residual powers secret, he could understand the inclination.

The blue-eyed blonde laughed nervously as she spoke, apparently trying to cover something up, "Yeah, well, that was a pretty cool trick, huh? My teacher's a magician and he taught me all sorts of neat tricks of the trade."

Ryou didn't know if it was his experience in bending the truth to explain certain bruises from 'accidents' or all those years he spent bargaining with the spirit of the Ring, but he had the feeling that Molly Carpenter wasn't telling the entire truth. As it was, however, now wasn't the time to call her on it.

What it _was _time for was finding some clue as to where the hell they had ended up and what the weird shadow he remembered from before he passed out had to do with it.

The whitette nodded, deciding to let Molly get away with her omission for the moment, and instead asked, "I know for certain that it was night time when I stumbled upon that fight, but do you have a watch or a phone so we know what time it is now?" He himself never wore a watch, and he knew for a fact that he'd left his own cell phone in his room, because hey, he'd just been going down the block for ten minutes to get something to eat!

He was now seriously regretting _that_ decision.

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><p>Molly's heartbeat had yet to calm down from the scare she had gotten when Bakura had mentioned her powers, and she still half-expected a sword-wielding Warden to show up out of nowhere to behead her. With the Doom of Damocles hanging over her head along with Harry's, even the slightest hint of her breaking one of the Laws of Magic set down by the White Council could result in her execution, so she had to toe a very fine line about what she said or did regarding magic.<p>

Of course, the council would have had to find out about her bending the truth before they could order her execution and with the Doom over her head, because Harry was her teacher it would fall to him to carry out her sentence, which was not something she _ever _wanted to put her mentor through.

When Bakura mentioned finding out what time it was, she shook her head sadly, lying through her teeth as she told the other woman, "Sorry, my watch strap broke earlier this week and I haven't got it fixed yet, and I left my phone at my house, so no to both questions." Well, at least the watch part was true…

As a wizard, technology tended to go wonky around her, though not to the extent it did her mentor. Harry could short out a Bluetooth by looking at it funny from a yard away.

The other woman looked at her strangely, and Molly felt sweat slide down the back of her neck before the whitette asked, "You left your phone at home? When you didn't know how long your walk would be or where you would be going? Doesn't that seem rather dangerous?" That was actually a very good point, and the apprentice wizard actually had to take a moment to think of an answer.

Sadly, her great comeback turned out to be a simple shrug, and if they were in an anime, Molly could have sworn that Bakura would have sweatdropped right then.

Molly looked around once more before pushing herself to her feet and holding out a hand to help Bakura to hers. She smiled at the other woman as she helped the whitette to her feet, and she asked confidently, trying to seem more in control than she was, "Well, what do you say we go exploring? There's got to be _something_ around here that could give us a clue about where we are…"

The blonde privately hoped that the answer wasn't anything that she would have explain to Bakura using the words 'magic' or 'wizardry' at some point.

She let go of Bakura's hand once the other woman seemed steady on her feet and then started walking away from the two obelisks, thinking that maybe there were more rooms in the palace-like building, hearing the whitette's soft footsteps behind her. She hoped that, if there were other rooms, that one of them would be a library where they could hopefully find a map and thus have a general idea of where the heck they were.

Judging from the style of the building and the intensity of the sunlight, she was guessing somewhere that got really, really hot. And that did _not _sound like it was a good thing for an extended visit for the unprepared (namely her and Bakura) by any stretch of the imagination.

A faint crinkling sound reached her ears, and Molly turned curiously. Her eyes landed on the fast food bag Bakura was holding (the logo said it was from McDonalds) and she raised her eyebrows while the other woman looked a bit embarrassed.

"Didn't I tell you? I was on my way back from getting a late-night snack when I stumbled upon your fight with the trolls…" She hefted the take-out bag for emphasis.

Molly sighed, smiling ruefully as she commented, "Well, at least we have _something_ to eat later." She grinned when Bakura chuckled, glad that the other woman's mood was lifting. She was still worried about the whitette's head injury, though she was relieved that it didn't seem like Bakura had a concussion, thankfully.

It was around ten minutes later, though the apprentice was only guessing about the amount of time, that Molly was about ready to give up the search until nighttime. She had been fine when they had started searching (she had found what looked like a lounge and a cupboard, and Bakura had found three bedrooms with actual beds) but now the heat was starting to get to her, and she didn't even want to think about it was affecting Bakura, especially since the other woman was injured and thus shouldn't exert herself.

"You know, we should probably find some place cool and rest for a while…" She actually _panted_, which she hoped Harry never found out about because having to rest after just ten minutes? In one word: embarrassing.

Bakura just nodded, and that was all the agreement that Molly needed.

It only took four minutes for them to get back to the lounge that the blue-eyed woman had found, and they both breathed a sigh of relief when they stepped into the room, both feeling the noticeable difference in temperature and enjoying the cooler air inside the lounge.

The room was large and spacious with a high ceiling, and it was sunken down slightly, Molly guessed that was to keep it cooler than the outside. The walls, floor, and columns set against the walls were the same sandy color as the room where she and Bakura had woken up had been, though the hieroglyphics were definitely different. There were low couches with crimson-hued cushions scattered around the center of the room, which was again lower than the other parts of the room, and there were brightly colored rugs scattered around.

Molly couldn't make out any specific designs, but the entire room definitely had a very 'Egyptian' feel to it.

The apprentice wizard couldn't make heads or tails of what the hieroglyphics said, but she really, really hoped that it wasn't something like 'a curse upon those who dare to sit upon the sacred couches' or anything along those lines.

The blonde and the whitette quickly sat down, and Bakura wordlessly pulled open his take-out bag and withdrew a bottle of Diet Coke and a cold hamburger.

At the moment that food looked like a feast to Molly.

The next fifteen minutes or so were spent silently eating the McDonald's take-out, as both of them wondered where the hell they were and what they were going to do when they got hungry again…

**Author's Note: Apologies for the poor room description, but the image in my head didn't translate that well onto the Word document…And yes, the gender misunderstanding continues! I don't really know when I'll clear that one up, maybe in a few chapters or so. Please R&R and tell me what you think! As always, constructive criticism is welcome!**


	4. Chapter 4

_Author's Note: And here is chapter 4! Actually making some progress here!_

**Shadows of Anarchy**

Ryou finished off the last of his half of the hamburger (that had miraculously survived everything that had happened), having given the other half to Molly, and took another sip of the Diet Coke that they had wordlessly decided to share.

Well, he mused to himself, at least his headache was beginning to abate. And the couches were surprisingly comfortable, which was a good thing considering that he had been about ready to black out before he and the blonde woman had entered the lounge in order to take a rest in slightly cooler temperatures. The low elevation of the room, more specifically the area that sported the couches, meant that the lounge was probably at least twenty to twenty-five degrees cooler than the entrance hall had been.

The hieroglyphics were slightly worrying, however, he decided as he glanced at the engraved pictures from the corner of his eye.

Although he had been the host of the spirit of the Millennium Ring, he had only a cursory knowledge of the written language of Ancient Egypt, and most of _that_ had come from looking over his father's notes when the man had been home.

He finally shrugged it off and decided that he had more important things to worry about, namely getting him and Molly out of wherever-it-was they were and back to Chicago. Preferably before the Duel Monsters Exhibition Tournament started and it was discovered that he was missing (he had paid for his room in advance until the tournament was over).

Because the tournament was sponsored by Kaiba Corp. and since Seto Kaiba himself was going to be there, if he didn't show up it was sure to raise at least one red flag, as he was ranked fourth in the world and his name was clearly listed on the tournament roster…not to mention that Kaiba would likely hunt him down just to kill him if he didn't show up.

The reason the tournament was being held in Chicago was simple: Kaiba wanted to expand his business in America and the surest way to do that was to get people excited about Duel Monsters, and the best way to do that was with a tournament featuring Kaiba's holographic technology and some of the premier duelists in the world. Though as far as Ryou knew, Joey and Yugi wouldn't be showing up until the day right before the competition was supposed to begin.

Ryou sighed under his breath, dusting his hands off and putting his trash into the empty take-out bag, seeing no reason to litter even if he was in some strange place where he might die of heat stroke, starvation, or any number of things. He saw Molly give him an odd look and he could only shrug.

The blonde woman returned the shrug and followed his lead by putting the trash back into the McDonald's bag.

Ryou sighed quietly as he stood up and stretched, feeling his arms and back pop and reveling in the release of tension from his muscles. He blinked when his vision blurred for a moment, and then looked back at Molly as he asked her quietly, "What should we do next? Should we wait until it gets dark and then look for a library, or should we do that now?"

Molly looked thoughtful for a moment and then answered honestly, "I think we should wait. It won't do us any good if we get heat stroke after all…And besides, you shouldn't push yourself too hard since you're injured." She didn't say anything about her own tiredness, but Ryou had learned well on how to recognize the signs of having almost no energy left. He supposed that flinging fireballs around and running from trolls was tiring work, and he wordlessly nodded as he moved to lie down on another couch, stretching out on the soft piece of furniture with a grateful sigh.

Judging from the near inaudible groan of relief from the couch across from him, Molly had come up with the same idea.

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><p>When Molly woke up what she guessed was at least an hour or two later, she felt a lot better than she had when she'd gone to sleep.<p>

She blinked the sleep from her blue eyes and barely managed to stifle a loud yawn behind her hand as she became aware of the position that she was lying in. Her upper body was hanging off the side of the couch, her hair brushing the floor and her hands flung over her head to lie on the cool stone. While her upper half was upside down, her legs were twisted to the left and pulled up like she was sitting on a chair or something. All in all, a very weird way to wake up, and she had to wonder how much she had tossed and turned in order to wind up like that…

The apprentice wizard grunted softly as she rolled over to try and straighten up, only to wind up falling completely off the couch.

Molly lay on the floor for a moment, blinking in stunned disbelief as she slowly looked back at the piece of furniture as though it had personally been responsible for _that _embarrassing moment. The couch just sat there, thankfully. Molly didn't know _what_ she'd do if the furniture suddenly started talking…Probably make use of the fact that she still had her blasting rod, she decided, and then groaned quietly as she pushed herself up to her knees, taking a moment to get her wits about her before shoving herself onto her feet.

She looked around, making sure that everything was the same as it had been when she'd gone to sleep, and she relaxed slightly when she saw that nothing was different. Though, she thought with a shiver, was it just her or was the room actually colder than it had when she and Bakura had come in?

The apprentice took a deep breath of the cooler air, trying to clear her mind like Harry had told her, and she stretched out her magic to try and see if there was anything magical around, namely any curses in the room that might be waiting for the two women to try and leave before activating…

She was actually knocked off her feet by the sheer _amount_ of magic in the room. It was the mystical equivalent of getting hit by a Mack truck and then having said truck back up a few times to make sure that it finished the job, or at least that was the only thing she could think of to compare it too through the newfound throbbing in her head.

Thankfully she landed on the couch she had so recently vacated, but her pounding head didn't leave her much room to appreciate that. She laid back down on the soft surface that felt like concrete to her now, breathing deeply as she tried to close off her magical senses one by one, blocking out everything else until she wasn't quite so overwhelmed by the energy of the room. The throbbing migraine died down slightly, but was far from gone as she laid there and tried to catch her breath.

That still left the problem of what that much magic was _for_, especially since it didn't feel like any magic she had ever felt before. Not for the first time since she had woken up, she wished fervently that Harry was there. She was sure that the wizard PI would know what to do.

Molly was pulled out of her wistful thinking by a shuffling sound from the other occupied couch, and she turned her head, wincing as she did so, enough to see Bakura starting to wake up.

* * *

><p>Ryou blinked slowly, his green eyes opening and closing several times before he registered the fact that, yes, he was awake and no, the events of the previous night (day?) hadn't been a dream. Well, there was one hope dashed, he thought wearily, heaving a small sigh under his breath.<p>

The good news was, he thought as he sat up, at least his headache was gone, though the dried blood on his face was itching like crazy.

Preoccupied as he was with the itching on his face, it took the former holder of the Millennium Ring a moment to notice that Molly was awake, though judging from the grimace on her face the nap hadn't really done her any good. He took a moment to stretch his arms above his head, wincing a bit as the limbs in question popped audibly, and then he shifted so that he was sitting on the couch instead of laying on it. He looked over at Molly, a hint of concern in his eyes as he asked her quietly, "Are you alright? Did something happen while I was asleep?"

It took a moment for the blonde woman to answer, but when she did she even managed to muster up a sort of half-smile, "I'm fine, I just got a slight headache after I woke up, nothing to worry about…" The flinch that crossed her face as her sentence trailed off said something very different, however.

Ryou frowned thoughtfully, mulling over a small kernel of an idea before he suggested, "Why don't you stay here, and I'll go out and check to see if there's anything around that could tell us where we are?" And before Molly could say anything in opposition to his idea, he slipped out the door of the lounge, smiling mischievously as he walked down the hallway (which was now illuminated by torches decorating the walls), the sound of several growled curses reaching his ears.

He spared a moment to wonder who had lit the torches, a shiver running down his spine at the thought of someone having come upon him and Molly while they were unconscious, but since nothing had happened to them, he could only guess that no one had looked into the lounge.

The former holder of the Ring limited himself to exploring the rooms immediately surrounding where he had left Molly, reluctant to venture out of shouting distance lest something happen.

As it turned out, most of the doorways led to closets and storerooms, which he thought looked interesting but didn't have time to spend exploring. He _did_, however, find a bathroom with actual running water! He could have wept with joy at that discovery, and there was a bounce in his step as he returned to his exploration.

Ryou walked through a few more hallways, somehow winding up back in the entrance hall, the giant torch shining like a beacon through the surprisingly deep darkness, casting flickering shadows across the floor, columns, and even the ceiling as the flame danced and crackled. He paused for a moment to look at the rather beautiful sight of the burning brazier; now that his headache was gone he was really able to appreciate the open room.

He also noted the hieroglyphics on the columns and the obelisks…and _why _was this place so familiar to him?

The nagging sense that he knew where he was continued chipping away at his mind and he was starting to get frustrated with his inability to figure out where he knew the place from. Thankfully a flash of movement near one of the columns distracted him before he could reach the part where he started pulling at his hair in aggravation.

Ryou turned his head to see what the source of the movement was, only to have his breath catch in his throat. One thought ran through this mind at the sight that greeted him when he looked towards the stone column and the creature wrapped around it.

_Diabound…_

**Author's Note: Aaaaaaand cliffhanger! Aren't I evil? XP I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed (Pink Wolf Princess, you rock!), and I hope you enjoyed this chapter! The next chapter will probably answer a few questions and create that many more! Please R&R and tell me what you think! Constructive criticism is welcome!**


	5. Chapter 5

_Author's Note: And here is chapter 5! _

**Shadows of Anarchy**

Ryou felt a vague tightness in his chest and throat, and his vision dimmed around the edges, causing him to faintly wonder if this was what it was like to have a panic attack. He stared up at the monster, feeling like he was about to pass out as memory after unpleasant memory hit him, one after the other.

Diabound*, the half humanoid, half snake monster that had been the Spirit of the Ring's Ka** when he had been alive was partially wrapped around the column, both the vaguely human half and the snake head on the monster's tail were looking at the white-haired teen calmly. That was disconcerting enough, but the play of flickering shadows across the duel spirit/monster added a whole other intimidation factor to the creature.

The vaguely humanoid monster was a mostly chalk-white color and had a very well-developed musculature, the snake part blending seamlessly into it. Diabound's head looked rather like a pharaoh's mask, all smooth, frozen features, with exception of the – was that hair? – protruding from the sides of the creature's (his?) head. Two large white wings were slightly spread out from the monster's back, and there were matching, much smaller wings on the Duel Monster's hips.

It might not look as threatening as some of the other duel monsters', but the whitette knew better than most exactly how powerful and dangerous Diabound was. He was especially aware of the monster's ability…He shuddered at the memory of what Yugi had told him that his "darker half" had used that ability to do.

Ryou looked at Diabound, a sinking suspicion beginning to rise in the pit of his stomach. The memory of the shadow he had seen before passing out entered his mind, as his burgeoning suspicion that the shadow had looked a lot like Diabound's outline was proven correct, now that the monster itself was more or less right in front of him. Ryou wondered if this was what it was like to approach a nervous breakdown…

A choked off gasp reached his ears, originating from somewhere behind him, and with a sinking feeling the whitette slowly turned until he was standing sideways so that he could see behind him and still keep an eye on Diabound.

Sure enough, Molly was standing at the entrance to the hallway that led to the lounge, staring with shocked horror at the duel monster wrapped around the stone column, and Ryou felt the beginnings of a powerful headache stir behind his eyes. He winced, something telling him that this would probably take some explaining with a chance that things could go south rather quickly, and he hesitantly smiled as he cleared his throat and spoke up, breaking the tense silence that had begun to settle in, "Um, Molly, this is Diabound…I would much appreciate it if neither of you tried to kill each other…please?"

The blonde woman appeared not to hear him, instead she pulled out that wand that he'd seen her use when she'd been flinging fireballs at the trolls and pointed it at the unmoving Diabound with trembling hands. Looking closer he could see that Molly's eyes were dilated and she was obviously having trouble focusing, sure signs of intense head-pain if he ever saw any.

Come to think of it, he realized, Molly probably shouldn't be handling anything remotely magical at the moment. The only problem was that he didn't know how to stop her or get the wand away from her without running the risk of getting himself set on fire.

Ryou sighed, oh well, it wasn't like he was unused to narrowly escaping death, he thought wryly as he slowly sidestepped towards Molly, not dumb enough to risk taking one eye off the so far unthreatening monster. He carefully reached out and grabbed hold of the wand just above where Molly grasped it as soon as he got within arms-reach, saying as he did so, "Now, let's just calm down - !" He cut himself off and jumped back when the tip of the wand began sparking dangerously, holding his hands up in the universal sign to indicate surrender as he took a few steps back.

* * *

><p>Her migraine pounding through her head, Molly had trouble just keeping from dropping her blasting rod and calling up the power needed to start charging the damned thing. For some reason, it was a lot harder for her to call power here – wherever <em>here<em> actually was – and she feared that she might actually have to do an entire ritual in order to cast something simple like a locator spell if using her blasting rod was giving her this much trouble.

For the moment, however, she was focused on the large monster-thing wrapped around the column that looked like it could snap both her and Bakura like toothpicks. Her arms trembled, causing the wizard's tool she was holding to waver, and her vision became spotted for a minute before it cleared. Bakura said something, but what riveted Molly's attention was the hand that grabbed hold of her blasting rod a moment later.

The second that the other woman's hand touched the blasting rod, the magic that Molly had been gathering to launch at the weird, half-snake thing went haywire, the blasting rod sparking warningly. The apprentice gaped at the blasting rod, too stunned to really process what was going on, but she definitely noticed when the blasting rod began emitting a low humming sound that made her think of the sound that laser weapons in the movies made right before they exploded…

She followed the white-haired woman's example and dropped the blasting rod before she jumped back. Time seemed to slow down as the magical tool fell to the ground…and then things returned to normal right before the magic that she had been building up in the wand discharged.

_Harry is going to _so _mad at me_, was the only thought that she had time for before the magic exploded out of the blasting rod in a brilliant explosion of blinding light and flickering heat.

There was screaming, but she heard it only distantly as she was thrown backwards, landing hard on her back and rolling several times before coming to a stop on her side. It took her several long minutes to realize that the screaming was coming from her as her lungs began to tighten and the second wave of heat washed over her.

It caused her skin to sting and tighten, and it vaguely occurred to Molly that heat as intense as the explosion seemed to be should have been a lot hotter. What she was feeling was, at most, something that she could compare to a bad sunburn, which was painful but not life threatening. From what Harry had told her about burns, she should count herself lucky that she wasn't experiencing what _he _had experienced.

She stopped screaming, having run out of air just as the light from the explosion began dying down, to the relief of her scorched retinas, and she gasped, refilling her lungs with precious air even though the warm air was distinctly uncomfortable going down her throat. A myriad of rainbow colored spots danced in front of her eyes, causing her head to swim in dizziness as she lay on her side, partially curled into the fetal position.

Spots still swirled in front of her eyes, preventing her from seeing anything, even her own hand in front of her face, and all of her senses seemed to have gone on vacation. Heck, she could only vaguely feel the stone floor that she was laying on!

A few minutes later, however, she became aware of a hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her back and forth, and she distantly heard Bakura's voice asking if she was alright. It sounded like the other woman was shouting from the other end of a tunnel, but Molly guessed that the explosion must have messed with her ears as well as her other senses.

It took a moment, but she managed to mumble – or maybe she shouted, who knew? – "I'm okay…explosion messed with my ears, and my eyes…Can't see anything…" She vaguely felt Bakura pull her into a sitting position, and then attempt to help her stand up, but just then all her senses which had deserted her came rushing back. Sound roared into her ears, making everything seem magnified by a hundred, from the sound of her and Bakura breathing to the crackling of cooling stone. Her skin became incredibly sensitive, tingling and stinging from where Bakura had a grip on her arms in order to support her. The sensory overload was too much for her, and she gratefully welcomed the darkness in exchange for the whirling spots that dominated her vision.

* * *

><p>Ryou had been thrown back by the sudden explosion, though he avoided the brunt of the impact since he had already been backing away when the wand had begun sparking.<p>

Still, his ears were ringing and there were spots in his eyes by the end of it. He lightly tapped the side of his head, trying to get rid of the bloody ringing in his ears, and he blinked furiously to try and remove the bright spots in his vision. He shook his head slightly, registering that he was sitting on the floor of the mausoleum (yes, seeing Diabound had jogged his memory, making him want to smack himself for not recognizing the scenery sooner. He had had a duel featuring that very card only a week ago!), though thankfully his head injury hadn't been reopened.

From the looks of things, however, Molly hadn't been nearly as fortunate, having gotten hit point blank by the magical explosion.

Ryou pushed himself to his feet, coughing because of the large fog of dust that was drifting around the entrance hall, and he stumbled over to where Molly was lying on her side. To his relief, it quickly became evident that she was alive and didn't seem to have trouble breathing. He knelt down next to the blonde woman and carefully put his hand on her shoulder, rocking her back and forth as he asked, "Are you alright? You were pretty close to the blast…" He trailed off as he remembered Diabound.

The whitette looked over towards the column that Diabound had been wrapped around, blinking at the enormous cloud of dust that surrounded it, and then it hit him (thankfully not literally). The magic wand had been aimed at the monster, so explosion or not, the majority of the energy must have gone towards Diabound, which explained why both he and Molly were still alive.

As the dust cleared, it quickly became apparent that the duel monster was likewise unharmed, thus proving Ryou's theory that the monster was more durable than it had any real right to be. Also, Diabound didn't seem to be very inclined to retaliating for the unintended attack. If anything, the monster gave the impression of being amused by the explosion…was the humanoid head looking at him in concern?

The duelist chose to pretend he hadn't seen that expression. It seemed easier on his sanity that way.

Just then, Molly spoke – well, sort of shouted, actually – and told him that the explosion had messed up her hearing and her sight. He couldn't really say he was surprised, as his own ears were still ringing but the spots had thankfully faded away.

He pulled the blonde into a sitting position, trying to help her to stand up, only he ended up supporting her entire wait as she fell unconscious. He sighed, muttering some rather kind words directed towards whoever had arranged the troll attack and the fireball that had caused them to be transported to the bloody Mausoleum of the Emperor of all places, and hefted Molly up so that he was holding her bridal style (he was rather grateful that he had put on some muscle since he was 16).

Ryou debated whether he should take the unconscious woman to the washroom or back to the lounge, but then he finally shrugged and decided on the lounge. If anything, Molly definitely needed somewhere comfortable to lie down.

With one last look towards the immobile Diabound, he set off at a brisk trot towards the lounge.

And he had a sinking suspicion that once Molly came to, things were going to get _very _complicated…

* * *

><p>*Look on Yu-Gi-Oh wiki, there's pictures<p>

**Spirit creatures created from a person's soul (fans should know this)

_Author's Note: Hey all, I'm being swamped by plot bunnies and I've starting writing a Yu-Gi-Oh GX/Dresden Files fic, so updates might be a little slower than they have been. Sorry! Blame the plot bunnies! Please read and review! As always, constructive criticism is welcome!_


	6. Chapter 6

_Author's Note: Chapter 6 is here! Just so everyone's warned, updates are going to be pretty slow on the grounds that I'm being attacked by vicious plot bunnies…*Sees pack of rabid plot bunnies approaching* Ack! Enjoy the chapter! *Runs away*_

**Shadows of Anarchy**

* * *

><p>Molly groaned as her awareness slowly came crawling back to her, and she almost wished that it didn't as it brought her attention to the myriad of aches and pains in her body. She blinked open her eyes, cringing as the sensitive orbs were assaulted by torchlight, and she exerted all her strength to turn her head away from the light.<p>

A pounding headache beat a thundering rhythm behind her eyes, making her whimper and also causing her to become aware of how raw her throat was, and how dry and tight her skin felt.

It felt like there were dozens of tiny fires burning beneath the surface of her skin, and she cringed, whimpering again, only to start coughing and hacking afterwards. Pain shot through her throat at that action, and her lungs struggled to pull in enough air. She was hardly aware of her hands rising to clutch at her throat, her entire focus on getting herself to stop coughing and thus alleviate the pain that she was in, the pain that was brought about by extreme thirst.

Just when it felt like she was about to black out, a hand slid beneath her head and raised it up enough for her to feel the edge of a cool glass that someone was holding up to her lips. The glass tilted and blessedly cool water touched her mouth which automatically opened and _empty night _did that liquid feel fantastic sliding down her parched throat!

The blonde woman continued drinking until the glass was completely drained, more than a few drops spilling out to run down her chin and neck which felt amazing, and the few times she attempted to chug the water thwarted by whoever was holding the glass pulling it away whenever she tried.

She gasped for breath, still thirsty, but at least the pain was somewhat bearable and she was able to try and think clearly. She was just beginning to remember some of the events that might have led up to her current condition when the rim of another glass of water (maybe the same one?) touched her lips and she was distracted by drinking as much of the cool liquid as she possibly could.

Molly blinked, not sure when she had closed her eyes, and blobs of color swam before her eyes before resolving into the shape of Bakura, the other woman wearing an expression of concern as she leaned over her, holding the water glass in one hand and apparently supporting the apprentice's head with the other.

The wizard-in-training finished off her second glass of water and managed to croak out, "What happened?" as she opened and closed her brown eyes* to try and banish the faint spots that had yet to leave her field of vision. On the up side, it seemed like her hearing had more-or-less returned to normal, with the exception of a faint ringing that she was able to ignore with a strong effort.

Bakura coughed lightly, and the apprentice to wonder if the other woman was also suffering the effects of the intense heat of the explosion from her blasting rod, and then began to speak, "First I have to say that I have some idea of how we went from nearly getting barbequed on a city street to – well, here actually," she paused to take a drink of the glass of water in her pale hand.

The blonde glanced over and saw that there were three other glasses of water on the floor next to where Bakura was kneeling (so it _hadn't_ been the same glass after all), and she realized that she was laying on one of the low couches in the lounge where she and the other woman had spent what had remained of the previous day.

After finishing her drink, Bakura continued speaking, "And second, that wand that you were pointing at Diabound exploded and…I don't really know how to tell you this, but you might want to take a look at yourself and then go take an ice bath…"

* * *

><p>Ryou watched as Molly blinked and then looked at her exposed arms, already knowing what the blonde woman would see and knowing that her reaction wasn't going to be pretty. All of the wizard-in-training's exposed skin, and probably the skin beneath her clothes as well, was literally as red as a lobster. He himself had been surprised at the sudden change in her skin color; if only because it was nowhere near as bad as he'd thought it would be given how close she had been to the explosion (he still didn't know how or why that had happened).<p>

Thankfully, the large blisters on the hand that had been holding the wand had burst while she'd been unconscious, thereby sparing her some of the pain that her full-body injury would undoubtedly cause her while it healed. The thought of the amount of peeling that would surely happen made him wince in sympathy, since the few times that he'd been sunburned had given him a healthy appreciation for the amount of discomfort they could cause, and Molly's would probably be ten to twenty times more painful.

He sat back on his heels as he watched Molly slowly turned her hands over, examining them from every angle, wincing at the sight of the popped blisters on the palm of the one hand, and he quietly took another drink of water to soothe his parched throat while he waited for the blonde woman to finish her self-examination.

After the inexplicable explosion, the former holder of the Millennium Ring had carried the unconscious blonde back to the lounge, as that was the first cool room that came to mind. Once he'd set Molly down on the couch that she'd slept on the previous day, he had run back to the bathroom and searched for around ten minutes before he had found six water glasses stashed in one of the cupboards (he honestly had no clue why they were there, but he was thankful that they were). He had then filled all of them up with water and carried them two at a time back to the lounge, because if there was one thing that he had learned after having had a few sunburns in his life, it was that staying hydrated was important.

Ten minutes after he had sat down on another couch to wait for the wizard-in-training to wake up, his skin had begun to feel tight and itchy, and his throat had started burning as though it had suddenly dried out. So he'd picked up one of the full glasses and sipped at the cool water until the glass was empty, but on the up side, his throat had moistened for the time being and his skin hadn't felt quite so tight…

Ryou thought rather ruefully that he should probably take his own advice and stay hydrated…and maybe take a cool bath or shower, just to be on the safe side.

The whitette was pulled out of his thoughts by a strangled sound from the direction of Molly's couch, and when he looked over to see what was wrong, he was treated to the amusing sight of the apprentice turning a curious shade of _purple _as she stared in horror at her lobster-red arms.

If the situation weren't so serious he would have laughed, the look on the blonde's face was just that funny. Instead, he mentally filed the memory away in his 'Do Not Forget Under Any Circumstances' file in the back of his mind as he asked her, helpfully holding out one of the remaining glasses of water as he did so, "More water?"

By all rights, the look that Molly shot him right then should have struck him dead and set him on fire, it was so venomous.

* * *

><p>Molly looked apprehensively at the large, sunken bathtub (seriously, she was pretty sure that she could go snorkeling in it and still have room to spare!) filled to the brim with cold water and the floating ice cubes in it. She honestly had no idea where Bakura had found the ice, but she decided to hold off questioning the other woman until she got into the tub and started the process of easing the furious burning under her skin. And she froze as, in the middle of stripping off the remains of her shirt, she remembered that Bakura had called the creature she had seen by name.<p>

_Diabound_, the whitette had called it. The very thought of the creature made her skin crawl, which combined with the burning of her sunburn served to make her wince and bite back a whimper. But that raised the question of how in the world Bakura had known that in the first place, and she wasn't about to just let that mystery slide by!

Names had power, especially over wizards and magical creatures like faeries and demons, especially True Names. Every serious practitioner knew that, or at least they knew the general idea of it, and so they were _very _careful about whom they told their names to. If another magic-user got hold of someone's full name, they could use it to take control of that person and make them do whatever they wanted – and other wizards were especially vulnerable to that sort of magic. And the more powerful the practitioner was, the more dangerous their true names were to them. And for magical creatures, their Names could be used to enslave them and so they guarded that information fiercely. For someone to find out the Name of a monster as powerful as this 'Diabound' obviously was…it was a huge deal, and it sent shivers jolting up and down Molly's spine.

The point _was_, the apprentice told herself as she finished pulling off the remains of her shirt, that names had power, and for someone like Bakura to have found out one of them…well, getting it definitely couldn't have been easy. There was also no putting off on asking her questions, because if the whitette was messing around with magic that she didn't understand, in the words of Harry Dresden 'all hell's going to break loose, padawan'.

Molly sighed in relief as she sank down into the chilled water, gooseflesh rising all over her body as the cold connected sharply with her full-body sunburn, and she groaned as the burning sensation under her skin suddenly lessened, leaving a sharp feeling in its' wake.

She heard the door open and opened her eyes, not knowing when she had closed them, in time to see the other girl set a small bucket full of ice down next to the tub. The blonde smiled, barely able to bite back the urge to immediately start questioning the whitette, and instead she decided to go the sneaky route and ask when the other girl couldn't easily get away. Noting that Bakura was keeping her eyes well aware from her and thinking that the white-haired girl was just shy, Molly cheerfully offered, "Come on in, the water's fine!" And, not seeing the red color that immediately rose to Bakura's cheeks due to the curtain of white hair she continued, "You weren't as close to the explosion as me, but I'm sure that an ice bath will help you feel better faster."

Bakura hesitated, which further reinforced Molly's guess that the other girl was really shy, but then reached up to unzip her coat hesitantly, head turned just enough to give the wizard-to-be a glimpse of the bright red color covering the whitette's cheeks.

Definitely shy, Molly thought as Bakura shrugged out of her jacket, and the blonde idly noted that Bakura's chest was rather flat for a….woman…

"You're a _guy_?!"

* * *

><p>* - I don't think the books ever told us what color Molly's eyes were, so I went with brown.<p>

_Author's Note: Yes, Molly is finally getting a clue. I could only keep the gender confusion going for so long, after all! ^.^ Again, I'm sorry for the really long wait, but the plot bunnies are still attacking me, and they have somehow gained access to catapults. I have no idea how. In semi-related news, I'm stuck on how to write a plot bunny, and I've rediscovered the wonders of the G-Gundam anime and the Stargate: SG-1 TV series. ;-)_

_Quick Poll: Would you like an interlude to see what's happening with Harry, or should I stick with Ryou and Molly?_


	7. Chapter 7

_Author's Note: At long last, here is chapter 7! Deepest apologies for the wait, but I was being held captive by plot bunnies and was only recently able to escape…for now. *Cue dramatic music and lightning flashes*_

**Shadows of Anarchy**

Ryou winced at the volume of Molly's sudden yell and quickly backed away from the bathtub, hands raised in the universal gesture of surrender. There was undoubtedly a very confused look on his face, and he blinked in honest confusion as he said, "Yes, I am a guy…please calm down, there's no need for violence!" He yelped as he ducked to avoid the thrown bar of soap and scurried back even further to get out of throwing range and by proxy closer to the door.

Hopefully if he left the room Molly would have had time to calm down from whatever it was that upset her so much that she was even now looking around for something else to throw that she could reach without rising out of the tub. He had no idea what was so surprising that the blonde wizard-in-training had felt the need to state the obvious by blurting out his gender. He thought back over all their interactions, and couldn't find any instance that he had told Molly that he was woman or anything other than a man.

It was, he accepted as he quickly ducked out the bathroom door and regretfully left his jacket behind, entirely possible that Molly had mistaken him for a girl at their first meeting. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that that had happened, as his friends had told him numerous times that he came across as rather feminine, and his jacket would have hid his chest and the fact that he didn't have breasts. Thankfully that misunderstanding hadn't been happening as often ever since he had turned 18, and truthfully Molly was the first one to do it in awhile – or at least the first one that he knew about.

Maybe he should think about cutting his hair? It certainly didn't help him keep from getting mistaken for a girl…No, he decided, resigned to the inevitable, doing that probably wouldn't help anything aside from making his head feel lighter.

The former holder of the Millennium Ring quietly walked down one of the many torch-lit hallways in the Mausoleum, dark eyes scanning every corner and shadow, just in case another duel monster decided to surprise him. He was still reeling mentally from seeing Diabound, because while he did sometimes use the white monster's card in duels, he had never once actually summoned the creature in a Shadow Game. That had been the Thief King's territory, and he made it a point to stay well away from that area.

What surprised him was that the pale monster hadn't actually _done _anything, just hovered there and watched him and Molly. And he had no idea what had happened to the creature after the wand explosion, but he knew for sure that he hadn't seen Diabound since then, although in the Shadow Realm that didn't really mean anything.

His suspicion about the monster having something to do with his and Molly's abrupt change in scenery was all but confirmed, though now he had to figure how to get himself and the apprentice wizard back to their own world. _That _was going to be a lot tougher than figuring out how they'd been transported to the Shadow Realm in the first place, let alone dropped into the Mausoleum of the Emperor.

The whitette paused for a moment to idly look at some hieroglyphs on the wall beside him, still pondering over the few answers he had and the many questions that remained unanswered. The least of which was the obvious question of why had he and Molly been saved from that strange fireball in the first place – not that he wasn't grateful – and what the Shadow Realm had to do with it. He let out a sigh, resigned to the fact that he apparently hadn't left the Shadow Games as far behind him as he had thought he had when Bakura had left, and then continued walking down the corridor. And come to think of it, why had Molly's wand exploded in the first place? He had a partial theory about that, but until Molly calmed down from the gender-confusion of earlier enough to talk to him he had no way to confirm it.

Yes, there was definitely an abundance of questions and a shortage of answers, though given the choice between a mystery and getting barbequed by a fireball; Ryou would pick the first option without thinking twice about it. He abruptly stopped walking, jolted out of his thoughts by the discovery that he was not in any hallway that he recognized. He groaned under his breath when he realized that he'd been so caught up in his musings he must have wandered deeper into the building, and he sighed as he looked around hopelessly and tried to figure out which way he should go to get back to the main entrance.

It just wasn't his day…

* * *

><p>Molly was sure that her face was a bright enough red to put a tomato to shame as she sank down into the tub of cold water (and where did the cold water come from, anyway? Weren't they in a desert or something?...) and tried to calm down. Her heart was beating a mile a minute as she leaned back against the edge of the tub and tried to remember if Bakura had ever told that she – <em>he<em>, dang it! – was a girl, but after several minutes she had to admit defeat. As far as she could remember, Bakura had never once said what gender he was, she had just assumed because of his name.

The apprentice wizard abruptly froze as she remembered Harry once mentioning that the Japanese said their last names first…and suddenly Bakura's introduction took on a whole new light. She groaned, smacking the back of her head lightly on the rim of the large bathtub, feeling like a gigantic idiot as her blush brightened enough that she was sure it even showed through her explosion-reddened skin.

After what she guessed was around a half-hour later, the water had changed from cold to lukewarm, so she guessed that it was time for her to get out before she risked hypothermia in addition to her new lobster-red complexion. Hauling herself out of the sunken tubs, her eyes landed on Bakura's (she was definitely going to have trouble thinking of Bakura as a 'he') discarded jacket, and she suddenly had a whole new well of embarrassment to draw from.

She privately promised herself that she was never, ever telling Harry about this, let alone her parents – she'd spontaneously combust from blushing if she even thought about bringing it up!

Shuddering at the sudden change in temperature from the bathtub to the air, goosebumps rising along her arms and legs, Molly hurriedly located a large towel (and when did that get there?) and patted herself dry, trying to be as gentle as possible so as not to aggravate her reddened skin. Considering practically every inch – and she did mean _every _– was bright red, that definitely wasn't an easy task. She was dreading the days that she was likely to spend peeling, and wouldn't that be a fun experience?

The apprentice wizard sighed, gathered her courage, and quickly got dressed (her clothes were starting to smell though, and that just raised the question of what she and Bakura would going to do about laundry), wincing when the fabric brushed against her over-sensitized skin. Yeah, this was not going to be a pleasant time in her life, it was almost as bad as that time she had gotten the full brunt of a slime golem explosion (_after _her teacher had finished laughing his butt off, and Harry delighted in reminding her that he had told her to back up more). She figured the two times were about even, because while she might not smell like a thousand cow butts, her skin was so sensitive that even the slightest brush stung like crazy.

Molly carefully laid the damp towel out on the floor as an impromptu bathmat to soak up the water that had flowed off of her, not wanting to risk slipping on a puddle and adding a bruised tailbone to her problems. It had happened before, and she wasn't keen on experiencing it now. She grimaced whenever her shirt lay too heavily on a particularly sensitive patch of skin, and if she hadn't still been so embarrassed over the gender mix-up with Bakura she might actually have considered walking around naked for awhile.

She exited the bathroom, not sure how to turn off the lights in the room and just deciding to let whatever magic ran the place sort it out.

The blonde emerged into the hall outside the bathroom and frowned, looking both ways as she tried to remember which way she had to go to get back to the lounge where she and Bakura had pretty much set up camp. Honestly though, she had been concentrating too much on how badly her sunburn-red skin had hurt to really pay attention to the route they had taken, and she was seriously regretting that now. She groaned quietly as she finally just picked a direction and started walking, figuring that she was bound to either find the lounge or Bakura if she wandered around – she just hoped that she didn't run into that 'Diabound' creature again.

This time making sure to make note of which hallways she turned down, using the symbols on the walls to help her remember the way back to the bathroom if she got too lost, she decided that exploring would do her some good. Especially since if she was curious about something the sting of her sensitive skin kind of faded to the back of her mind, though Harry had told her that that was both a blessing and a curse, even if she didn't get what he meant by that.

As she explored, she noted a lot of repetition in terms of the symbols that appeared on the walls, except for some minor differences, and with just her luck they would turn out to be directions. She sighed in frustration as she turned left down another corridor and kept an eye on the wall carvings as she walked: they were easily recognizable as hieroglyphs; she knew that much from sneaking glimpses of the Discovery channel. Unfortunately for her, Discovery had never told her what those symbols _meant_. She was both hoping that they were directions and dreading that at the same time, and she really didn't know which she wanted to be true more.

Unconsciously reaching out to run her hand along the wall as she made her way down the hallway, she abruptly jerked her hand back when something that felt a lot like a static shock zapped her. Gently rubbing her hand to try and ease some of the sting, she cringed when she saw several symbols begin to glow.

Well, Molly thought, _that_ couldn't be good…

_Author's Note: And there you have it! Ryou's lost and Molly just triggered some sort of defense system/booby trap/weird glowy thing! And to those who asked to see what's happening with Harry and gang in the real world, I've decided to do an interlude for the next chapter. I'm not sure how good it'll be, but I'll give it a shot!_


	8. Chapter 8

_Author's Note: By popular request, here's what's been going on with Dresden in the real world. I honestly think Molly and Bakura have been having an easier time…_

**Shadows of Anarchy**

As Harry Dresden stared down at the scorched, blackened patch of asphalt in front of him, which he recognized as the result of a spot of road's rather unfortunate meeting with a fireball, he began to get the feeling that he was missing something. Pieces of metal that looked like they might have been cars in some past life littered the street, and most of them looked like they'd gone a few rounds with a trash compactor – and lost badly. He grimaced at a lump of charred metal that reminded him uncomfortably of what his Blue Beetle had looked like after an encounter with a brick wall and a flamethrower that one time…

Shaking off the – highly unpleasant – memory of his narrow escape from sharing his beloved car's fate, the wizard instead carefully examined the area around the burned section of street, the noise of police officers doing the same behind him fading into the background. His eyes narrowed in thought as his previously quick walk around the scene slowed to only a few steps every six or seven minutes. As a rather accomplished user of fire magic (if he did say so himself), he well recognized the burn pattern associated with a truly impressive fireball, and the melted asphalt showed all the signs of having encountered exactly that.

If he looked at the destruction as the scene of a magical battle, the damage done to the road suddenly made a lot more sense.

Fire damage aside (though that was definitely the result of magic), the crushed and torn apart cars were done by something else entirely. He stopped to examine one, and was able to see, after a few moments of squinting, the vague outline of what _might_ have been finger-marks…if normal fingers were as long as a Little League baseball bat and twice as big around. Yeah, he probably wouldn't mention that to anyone but Murphy, he thought to himself as he moved along to the next bit of rubble.

Several minutes later, and that feeling Harry had had of missing something important had grown to an almost certainty that he was missing something. He finally gave in, took a deep breath, and opened his Sight, the ability all wizard's possessed to see beneath the surface of the physical world and into the magical. It allowed magic-users to see the residue left behind by all varieties of magic and strong emotion and the true appearance of a person's soul, though the Sight was a double-edged sword in that whatever a wizard looked at with it, they never forgot. This could be a blessing, in the case of pure, vibrant souls (like Murphy's, his mind traitorously whispered and that he did his best to ignore), or a curse, in the case of…well, nearly everything else he'd ever viewed with his Sight.

He didn't have the best of luck when it came to things like that, unlike his apprentice Molly who had gotten to…_ahem_…the first time she had used her sympathetic abilities to tap into a murder victim's last moments. His face still turned red just thinking about it…

It took him a few minutes to get that memory out of his head, and when he managed it his face was still tinged red in embarrassment, but he was able to focus on what he was Seeing in front of him. At first it was just a haze of misty colors, but then things got clearer and he was able to make out the individual shades: the soft yellow of confusion near the compacted-but-not-really car, the murky gray of fear that twisted and wound from one end of the street to stop in the middle of the melted asphalt that he had been investigating, and worst of all, the brilliant, angry red that could only come from a mixture of rage and hunger. The kind of rage and hunger that creatures of the Nevernever usually gave off when they came to this world for a quick snack – or were summoned for a quick snack.

What confused him, however, was the lingering darkness in the center of the melted asphalt, the dark absence of any of any other lingering emotion. He had only seen that color a few times before (namely because it was rare that his Sight manifested as colors, but nevertheless) and he knew what it meant: something very, very dark had been there, and it had been strong enough to overpower all the other lingering emotions and magical traces that were bound to have crossed through it.

Harry blinked as he closed his Sight and then re-opened his eyes, having more questions than answers, but that was usually par for the course in cases like this one. He supposed he should just be glad that the Chicago police had officially hired him for this one so he could get paid, he mused to himself as he looked around the ruined street with a new perspective, piecing together what his Sight had showed him and trying to come up with a rough estimate of what had gone down. He _definitely_ didn't like what he came up with, and not just because some of the traces he'd found were _very_ familiar to him…

The wizard blinked, shook his head minutely, and forced himself to think in general terms and not what he suspected (although he would certainly be calling the Carpenter house after he got done at the scene).

From what he could figure out, whatever creatures had been there had been chasing the source of the fear-gray trail, which had fought back with some blasts of magic that apparently hadn't done much. Then someone or something else had arrived on the scene and taken cover behind the crushed car when they had seen what was happening, and then the traces had gotten all mixed together so he couldn't really make out anything from them, but he did know something: a third party (not including the monsters who had chased the terrified person down the street) had been the one who did whatever it was that had melted a large part of the street.

He had no idea what had happened to the other two people, but he had the sinking feeling that it wasn't good. He tried to ignore that feeling because, against all evidence to the contrary and all attempts of the universe to convince him otherwise, he was an optimist.

Harry sighed, stepping back and heading over to lean against the lamppost near Murphy's car while the woman herself talked seriously with one of the uniforms on the opposite sidewalk, rolling his shoulders to try and ease some of the tension he was feeling as he looked over the ruined section of street. The devastation he was looking at was just the latest in a long string of off occurrences he had been called in on, though it was definitely the most obvious. The others had included, but were not limited to, dozens of floating lights appearing near the docks, people reporting huge shadows moving around the backstreets near Cabrini Green, and a wall of thorny vines growing overnight to block the entrances of three storage warehouses (all of them belonging to one Gentlemen Johnny Marcone, oddly enough…and no, Harry wasn't smiling at all, what are you talking about?).

Some individual people had also come to his office to report items that had mysteriously disappeared – all of them family heirlooms – and though it had been easy enough for him to use a tracking spell to find them (they had all been in some truly unexpected places…) the frequency that it had been happening unnerved him. And while business might have been going well, everything else hadn't: the Blue Beetle (the Frankenstein of a car might actually have been blue at some point in its' life) had broken down again and was in the shop, leaving him to hitch rides whenever he could and risking the Chicago cab service whenever he couldn't. The last 'monster of the week' had busted his door down, so he'd had to shell out the money to have that fixed, and combined with his bills, the cab fare, food and drink expenses, that one trip to the mall so he could find some more clothes after that one infestation of mold demons, the pay from the constant string of jobs he'd been getting disappeared pretty fast.

The Wizard with the Mojo tried to look on the bright side; at least he had been able to pay off his debts and have a couple of dollars worth of pocket change left over. That was breaking even if ever he had done it, he decided as he mentally groaned and forcefully turned his thoughts back to the matter at hand. He straightened up when Murphy came over to him, a serious expression on her face, and he had to restrain a rather unmanly giggle at the sight of such a serious expression on her unmistakably cute face. Sergeant Karrin Murphy really wasn't what you would expect the head of a division of the police force devoted to dealing with the supernatural crimes of the city to look like, but that was exactly what she was: barely over five foot height, blonde pixie bob haircut, and almost dainty frame and all.

Harry knew for a fact that she could kick butt and take names with the best of them, having gone up against her in the sparring ring more than a few times. Not to mention her skill with a gun (and chainsaw) were not to be looked down upon lest you find yourself on the receiving end of a beat-down courtesy of the slight blonde.

"Well? Any idea of what went down here?" She asked wearily, slight lines around her eyes betraying the stress she had been under recently with this recent string of odd and undoubtedly supernatural things happening. Thankfully no one had actually gotten killed because of them (although a few of Marcone's men had had to go to hospital due to giant thorn wounds), but there had been several accidents and injuries caused by the without a doubt magical occurrences. It was actually pretty tame compared to what he was used to, and that made him even more suspicious that this was just the calm before the storm, as it were.

"Something big from the Nevernever came through here chasing someone, they had a showdown, someone else stumbled onto what was happening, and there was apparently a fireball conjured at some point." And whoever it was the thing was chasing was scared, nearly terrified, he mentally added, not to mention the second person on the scene.

Murphy looked briefly exasperated, "You can't give me anything more than that?"

Harry responded with a brief headshake, "No, all I saw was faint emotional traces, but I figured out that something nasty from the Nevernever was here and feeling hungry. I couldn't tell what happened to the two people, though, but I'll keep looking." He dropped his eyes to a point on Murphy's left shoulder as he spoke in order to avoid a soul-gaze (when people said eyes were the windows to the soul, they weren't half-wrong).

A few more minutes of Harry describing what he'd managed to find out, and they parted ways, neither satisfied with what they'd learned, and a harrowing cab ride later in which the vehicle almost broke down and the GPS began speaking Swahili, the wizard arrived back at his basement apartment. Paying the swearing cabby and making sure to tip a few extra dollars, he barely avoided having his foot run over as the cab pulled quickly away. If he didn't know any better, Harry would have sworn that the guy had been in a hurry to leave (though if it was to fix the GPS, he honestly couldn't blame him).

Forcing open the heavy door and entering the apartment, which was dominated mostly by overfilled bookshelves, comfortable second-hand furniture, and a multitude of shaggy rugs covering the stone floor, he grunted as he pushed the iron barrier closed (the reason he didn't get it fixed was simple – the effort required to open it had saved his life more than once). When he turned around, he had to brace himself as thirty pounds of gray fur assaulted his shins. Mister, his overly-large and lazy cat, purred loudly as he pushed against the tall wizard's shins, then turned and went over to his empty food bowl in an imperious demand that it be filled.

On one of the couches, a large mountain of gray fur poked its' head up, revealing itself to be what looked like a wolf/draft-horse hybrid. Mouse, his ironically named dog (give him a break, the dog had been able to fit in his duster pocket as a puppy!), stepped down from the couch to join Mister over by the food bowls, looking at Harry with pleading eyes before looking down at his sadly empty dish. And because Harry was a big softie, he filled up both bowls with their respective animal's food.

Making his way over to the trapdoor leading to his sub-basement/laboratory as the sounds of kibble crunching sounded behind him, he prepared to get down to business as he grabbed a candle, lit it, and descended the ladder. Remembering to close the trapdoor behind him, he called out, "Rise and shine, Bob!" and on one of the shelves that lined his workroom, a human skull's eye sockets lit up with orange lights.

Bob was his assistant, a spirit of Air and Intellect bound to the human skull sitting on the shelf next to a metal box and a large stack of porn novels. The skull yawned, though how it made the sound without lungs Harry would never know, and said, "'Sup Boss?"

"We've got work to do, Bob," Harry said, lighting the candles around the lab with a quick '_fuego_' and set about gathering his divining supplies.

Bob's eyes brightened to a brighter shade of orange and he asked eagerly, "What are we brewing up today? A lust potion? Maybe an orgy-in-a-bottle?"

Harry rolled his eyes at Bob's usual perverted suggestions, "No, we're going to do a little divination to try and figure out what's causing all the magical mishaps around the city. I can't help but feel like all the minor things are working towards something bigger." He gathered the various maps of Chicago lying around his lab and a set of Scrabble tiles he'd gotten in case of emergency and looked expectantly over at Bob.

"Ugh, fine. You know, a good roll in the sheets could really help you loosen up, Harry." Bob grumbled before rattling off the directions for a standard question/answer spell and Harry got to work.

Ten minutes later, the wizard was getting annoyed and asked Bob insistently, "Are you _sure_ that that was all there was to the spell?"

"_Yes_, for the third time Harry! Are you sure you're doing it right? Repeat what you did back to me." The spirit exclaimed with no small amount of annoyance.

Harry carefully recited what he'd done, wishing for the hundredth time that Little Chicago, his life-sized model of the city, was up and operational. But no, the model was still very much under construction and wouldn't be ready for at least another several months, which meant he was stuck with standard divination. Which, at the moment, wasn't doing much more than confusing and frustrating him, "I did everything right, so is there some other reason the spell wouldn't work?" He asked.

The skull made a thoughtful noise – don't ask him how – and then said, "Well, if it's not the spell itself, maybe it has to do with how you phrased your question…what did you ask and what answer did you get?"

"I went for something easy, so I asked who was behind the strange occurrences going on – and yes, I know that there could be more than one person causing the trouble, but I was being hopeful – and all I got back was 'darkness'. Whatever _that_ means." The last part was grumbled in annoyance under his breath.

"Hmmm, maybe a spell a little stronger will be more specific?" Bob cheerfully rattled off directions to a different spell, and Harry cleared everything up before setting up for the new ritual, this one involving the use of the maps, tiles, and for some reason flower petals. Fifteen minutes later, and just as the spell was about to take hold, the flower petals caught fire, caused a large burst of light that had Harry diving for cover beneath his desk and swearing, "_Stars and stones!_" as he whacked his leg on the corner in the process.

When the light died down and left only the smell of burnt flowers in the air, Harry's head cautiously emerged from behind the desk, rubbing his leg as he stood up on seeing that it was all clear. He certainly hadn't expected _that_ to happen, he thought ruefully as he called out, "Bob? What just happened?" Distantly, he registered the sound of scratching coming from the trapdoor, and what sounded an awful lot like Mouse whining, which ratcheted up his concern level by more than a few notches.

The skull's eye sockets flickered with light briefly and then brightened, Bob sounding a bit dazed as he warbled out, "Whoa, didn't see that coming…look at the pretty lights…"

Seeing that his assistant was still pretty star-struck, Harry hobbled over to his worktable and looked at the burned and charred map (he really hoped that that wasn't an omen meant for the actual city) and blackened tiles. He sucked in a breath, and he said uneasily, "Hey, Bob, pull it together. I really need to know something."

Hearing the unnerved tone in his wizard's voice, Bob's skull rattled briefly before he said, in a much more coherent voice, "Yeah, I'm good now. What do you need, Harry?"

The tall wizard turned his head to look at the skull, slightly long black hair swinging with the motion, and he asked shakily, "What does it mean when that spell explodes and the ash spells out the word '_shadows_'?"

"…Nothing good, Harry, nothing good."

_Author's Note: Not the best chapter, I know, but this one just didn't want to be written! This is also my 'thank-goodness-we're-all-okay!' chapter, because I went through a large scare when those tornadoes tore through Oklahoma and Texas a couple of weeks/a month ago. Believe it or not, I actually started this when things calmed down and I just now managed to finish it…:P_


	9. Chapter 9

_Author's Note: Hey guys - this long-awaited chapter is my Christmas/holiday present to you all, and I thank you for sticking with this story for so long. :) I might be a little out of practice writing the characters, but I'm going to do my best._

**Shadows of Anarchy**

Molly groaned lowly as her eyes blinked open, leaving her staring dazedly up at a hole in the ceiling. It took a few minutes before her sluggish mind registered that the hole was in fact a still-open trapdoor, which she had apparently fallen through, if the furious stinging in her back was any indication. Said stinging was rapidly gaining in intensity, but she swallowed and managed to push it out of her mind as she gently levered herself up into a sitting position, hissing as the motion aggravated her burned skin. Ooooh yeah, that _really _hurt!

She whimpered softly in pain as her skin pulled and stretched when she moved, carefully standing and trying her best to look around without moving her head or neck too much. She was reasonably successful at the first part, but utterly failed at the second part, a hiss of pain slipping from between clenched teeth as she finally gave up on trying to turn her head to look around. Instead turning her entire body, she squinted as she tried to see through the darkness surrounding her and make out something, anything that might tell her where she was and how to get back up to the floor she'd been on.

The only light, as far as the apprentice wizard could tell, was coming from the open trapdoor above her and illuminating her and a small area around her like some sort of spotlight. Far from being comforting, the light shining down on her made her feel like either a target or some sort of art object being presented at auction. She shivered, ignoring the stinging the small motion caused, and instead focused on finding some way to get the heck out of there and back up to where Bakura was.

She wasn't even mad at the white-haired man anymore - strange how falling through a trapdoor could do wonders for someone's priorities.

All things considered, Molly thought distantly as she hesitated over whether or not to use her Sight, she'd probably gotten off easy. If she remembered that one documentary she'd seen about Ancient Egyptians, they had the habit of putting nasty surprises at the bottom of their trapdoor/pit-fall traps. She swallowed, feeling nauseous as an image of skeletons impaled on a mass of spears flashed through her mind, and she hurriedly closed her eyes and breathed deeply as she tried to use the concentration techniques Harry had taught her to banish it. That part of the documentary had always stuck with her, and right now she was seriously wishing it hadn't.

Shaking her head and then hissing slightly as the slight swing of her hair pulled at her burned scalp, she brought her focus back to the matter at hand. She didn't want to step out of the lighted area, no matter how targeted it made her feel, but she had the sinking feeling that she would have to. Air magic was out, since she didn't have anything to focus it, her blasting rod being in so many pieces that it wasn't even funny from the explosion, so she would have to come up with another idea.

Once again the apprentice contemplated using her Sight to try and figure out if there was anything in the shadows surrounding her that might think she would be a tasty snack, but she hesitated over actually doing it. Anything she looked at with her Sight would be forever burned into her memory, meaning she could never forget it, and if she wasn't careful about what she looked at she could get images that would make horror movie-makers green with envy embedded in her mind. At least that was how Harry had described it to her - she didn't know for sure, but she was taking his word for it. He spoke from experience, after all, and generally knew what he was talking about when it came to magic.

The incident with the gnomes and the three-headed talking turkey notwithstanding.

Molly shivered, not even noticing the faint pain it caused, when she heard _something_ rustle in the shadows, sounding a great deal like her dad's cape did when he moved around. It was definitely fabric, but as her blue eyes darted around, trying to pierce through the darkness and find what had made the sound, she saw nothing save the surrounding blackness. Okay, that was just plain creepy, she thought with another pained shiver.

It wasn't just the darkness that was getting to her; the very air itself felt heavy and oppressive despite the shadows being kept at bay, like there was a weight pressing down on her chest and making it hard to breathe. She took shallow breaths even as she carefully gathered her magic and tried to sense if she was under some sort of spell, just in case someone or something had decided to cast some mind magic and make it seem like the air was trying to suffocate her. She wasn't under a spell or charm or anything that she could tell, but she was still tense as she tried to figure out a way to get back up to the level she'd fallen from.

Just as she'd resolved to open her Sight and hope for the best, a faint flicker of light appeared in the darkness, setting the apprentice wizard on her guard as it gradually grew brighter and brighter. The source of the light came closer and Molly watched, enthralled, as the dark retreated somewhat, revealing the stone floor beyond her own lighted area. And as the light came closer, it solidified until she found herself looking at a glowing white ball* while she blinked in disbelief.

The light from the hovering orb grew brighter, and Molly relaxed in spite of herself, feeling a comfortable warmth wash over her. It was strange to feel so comfortable around something warm, considering she had thought she had had enough of hot things for a long time, but the glowing ball moved a bit closer, then retreated. It confused her, but after the strange thing repeated the motion several times, she thought she got the gist of what it wanted, namely for her to follow it.

Molly was reluctant to actually do that, as Harry had told her about a lot of fairy creatures that led travelers astray in the old days, but the now-clearly seen path through the shadows surrounding where she'd fallen tempted her. '_Face it, Molly, you have to get out of here somehow,_' she thought, '_and at least if I follow the floating ball of light I'll be able to see where I'm going, not to mention that if I stay here I'll probably die of starvation, dehydration, or something even worse._' That pretty much decided it for her, and the blonde took her first step onto the stone floor revealed by the glowing orb and cautiously followed the floating light as it drifted away.

A short time later, and Molly could safely say that wherever that trapdoor had dumped her was freaking _huge_. Sure she didn't have a pinpoint sense of time, but even she knew that if you could walk for five minutes without reaching the end of a room then it was a big room. Of course, just after she'd thought that she looked ahead and noticed the light coming off the floating orb was starting to illuminate what looked a lot like walls, and she could have hugged someone she was so happy when she saw the stairs and took her first step up them.

She was getting closer to the ground level! To where Bakura and the bathroom and everything hopefully was!

Feeling a bit giddy, there was a distinctive bounce in her step as she ascended the stairs, following after the light ball and trying to ignore the fact that now that she could see the walls, the images painted on them looked distinctly ominous. The further up she climbed, however, the less frightening the wall carvings became, and she suddenly realized that it was getting easier and easier to breathe. That was certainly one thing to be thankful for, she noted, and she sighed quietly in relief as she reached the top of the stairs and followed after the glowing orb as it drifted down a hallway.

It was getting a lot easier to see, Molly realized after a moment, and it wasn't just because of the bright light given off by the floating ball. No, it was because every once in awhile, after turning a corner or several, she would pass a lit torch that gave off a respectable amount of warm orange light in contrast to the pure white light of the orb she was following. There was no set pattern to when she would pass a torch, but she took the mere fact that there were torches _there_ as a sign that she was getting closer to the floor that she had started on.

The glowing orb led her up four more sets of stairs, and Molly was really starting to wonder exactly how far she'd fallen and _stars and stones_ how had she managed to walk away from falling from that height?!

At the top of the fourth set of stairs, she was forced to squint against the light coming from the doorway, so much so that her eyes were nearly shut, and walk into that light practically blind. She blinked afterwards, looking around in confusion when she found that she was in a hallway that had a surprising amount of torches compared to the previous hallways she'd been in. In fact, the hallway actually looked...familiar. Like déjà vu familiar, and she realized, with a start, that she had walked down that very corridor with Bakura on the way to the bathroom earlier.

Elation filled her, and she couldn't stop relieved laughter from escaping her as it clicked that she was back on the floor that she and Bakura had set up camp in. And she knew that she could find her way back to the lounge-type room if she could get back to the bathroom, so it was with a bright smile that she looked around to find the floating orb in order to thank it (or some equivalent, in case it was a creature of the NeverNever**). Her smile dropped into a frown of confusion when she realized that the glowing ball was gone, with no trace that it had ever been there, and her bewilderment deepened when she turned around and found that the doorway she'd walked through was also gone without a trace.

Her delight at getting back to a place she knew in the creepy Egyptian-themed place she had found herself in was dampened as a chill ran down her spine. _Empty night_, she thought, staring at the hieroglyph covered wall in front of her. It was like there had never been an opening there in the first place, and with no sign of the glowing ball that had led her there, she was honestly wondering if she'd imagined it or if she was seeing things.

She shuddered at the weirdness of it, then pressed her lips together and steeled herself, turning and attempting to get her bearings. After a few minutes Molly remembered which way the drawings on the walls had been facing when she'd walked passed on the way to the bathroom, and she started walking back towards the lounge, deciding to skip the bathroom altogether. Her skin and muscles ached and she really, really wanted to just lay down and sleep for a week (and hopefully be unconscious when her skin started peeling - that moment was an ever-present dread hovering in the back of her mind).

Her feet aching, Molly groaned softly, muttering, "...Really hope there's some of that water left..." under her breath as she trudged down the hall. In the back of her mind, she registered the feeling that something was off, but she didn't truly acknowledge it, focused entirely on finding her way back to the lounge as she was.

Moments after the blue-eyed*** woman's soft mutterings faded, a shadow seemingly cast by one of the torches stirred unnaturally, writhing on the stone wall momentarily before darting off in the opposite direction that Molly had gone. It's work was done.

* * *

><p>*Mystical Shine Ball. Pretty self-explanatory.<p>

**The Winter and Summer fairy realms, also a home to other supernatural beasties. Anyone who knows Dresden Files will know this one.

***I'm sorry, everyone, I can't seem to decide what color Molly's eyes are. I know I said they were brown in a previous chapter, but then I reread the very first chapters and apparently I said they were blue...I don't know anymore. Which do you guys prefer? Blue or brown? (When in doubt, ask the readers, LOL!)

_Author's Note: I am soooooo sorry that it's taken me so long to update this story, and I want to thank everyone who favorited this story and added it to their alerts. I know it's not that long, but that seemed like a good place to end it. As I said, this is my Christmas/holiday present to all you readers, and I wish you a Merry Christmas and happy holidays!_


	10. Chapter 10

_Author's Note:...Yeah, I have no excuse for how long it took me to finish this chapter. I can only apologize and admit that I basically only finished it and posted it today as a birthday present to myself. Thank you to everyone who has stuck with this story and waited patiently for the update! Without further ado, here's what's happening with Bakura._

**Shadows of Anarchy**

* * *

><p>'<em>Okay, this is just getting ridiculous.<em>' Ryou Bakura thought wearily, his shoulders slumping in defeat.

He had been walking around in circles for what felt like hours, passing by the exact same hieroglyphs upwards of twenty times (that was the number he'd stopped counting after, at least). He was currently standing in the middle of what was becoming a _very_ familiar corridor and pretty sure it was about time that he just accepted the fact that he was completely and utterly lost.

Of course, knowing that he was lost and figuring out how to find his way back to the lounge were two entirely different things, and he had no idea how to go about the latter, he reflected with a quiet sigh.

The white-haired man sank down into a crouch, his arms propped up on his legs as he hung his head and tried vainly to remember what route he'd taken to get to the spot where he'd first realized that he was lost. Unfortunately he'd been too lost in thought to really pay any attention to his surroundings, he discovered after several minutes of intense thought, and the only thing that really jumped out at him was the vague memory of passing a statue at some point. Which was more than a little unhelpful, but it was all he could remember about his wandering that had gotten him into his current situation so at least it was something.

Ryou reached up and dug his fingers into his hair, trying one more time to think back and see if there was anything besides the vague memory of a statue that could help him find his way back to the lounge (that probably wasn't the technical name for it, but that was what he was calling it until someone corrected him). He gave up after a few moments and sighed morosely, pushing himself up to his feet and looking around carefully just in case he'd missed something the last few times he'd passed through the hallway.

He hadn't missed anything important, as it turned out, because the hieroglyphs weren't anything useful like directions - no, they just told the story of some ancient ruler (unsurprising, considering where he was), and were thus useless. Interesting, but useless.

Still, he made sure to keep a closer eye out as he slowly started down the hallway, just in case the architects had decided it would be funny to sneak in some directions in the midst of stories about wars and conquests. They hadn't, but glancing over the hieroglyphs and doing a quick translation inside his head saved him from getting bored while he walked. The muscles in his legs were burning, and he was really starting to regret having skipped his morning runs for the last three weeks - restructuring his duel deck for a tournament was obviously no excuse for neglecting physical exercise, no matter what Joey Wheeler said (substituting 'physical exercise' with 'homework').

Ryou paused, drawn out of his thoughts when he caught what seemed like faint movement from the corner of his eye, but when he turned to get a better look, there was nothing. He frowned, looking suspiciously at the shadows around him, and was it just him, or did that patch of darkness just move?

The whitette's eyes narrowed as he stared at the suspicious shadow, but after several minutes of watching it flicker in the torchlight and look completely natural, he gave up and started walking again. It was probably just his imagination, he reassured himself, unable to resist flicking one last glance at the shadows behind him. They wavered in the torch light as shadows were wont to do but did nothing else. He sighed as he turned fully back towards the front and kept moving; obviously the Shadow Realm was already starting to make him paranoid - he was jumping at literal shadows for crying out loud.

A good ten minutes of walking later, however, and he was starting to rethink his quick conclusion of just being paranoid. One eye twitched as, once again from the corner of his eye, he saw one of the shadows move in a decidedly unnatural way. He was reasonably sure that shadows weren't supposed to follow someone they weren't connected to, which the one he was keeping an eye on was definitely doing. Thankfully following him seemed to be the only thing it was doing, and while disturbing he could deal with it.

He had shared his body with the spirit of an ancient tomb robber - he had seen, heard, and done things weirder than an independently moving shadow.

In an attempt to distract himself from the following patch of shadow (wait, why did that seem familiar? The sight of a shadow darting along the wall was definitely ringing a few bells...) he checked the hieroglyphs on both walls, still vainly hoping that someone had thought to include directions. Nope, still the same stories about wars and a conquering king, and he heaved a sigh, allowing his head to fall back as he contemplated praying for help...and that was when he saw the ceiling.

Ryou _gaped_, he honestly did, for almost six whole minutes as he absorbed the fact that there were hieroglyphs on the ceiling. His gape turned into a glare and scowl combination when he mentally translated them and found them detailing a trap of loops and misdirection intended to catch thieves and trespassers that he had apparently stumbled into. His eye twitch was back in full force as he finished reading, both irritated that he'd been wandering around in a ancient magical booby-trap for who knew how long and thankful beyond words that the hieroglyphs also told him how to get _out_ of the aforementioned trap.

The trap was both simple and complicated, as it turned out. It was designed to keep thieves wandering around in circles and away from anything valuable until they either died or a guard, if there were any at the time, came to collect them. To that end, the magic of the trap affected their minds, making them think that they were walking down a straight hallway, when in reality they were going around in circles, always winding up back where they had been the moment they triggered the trap. So really, it wasn't that there weren't any turns in the hallway, it was just that Ryou couldn't see and acknowledge them due to the trap.

Groaning and growling at the same time, the eighteen year-old began the process of escaping the trap, which was really just a matter of turning down a different path than the one the trap had been keeping him on. A simple thing in theory, a more difficult thing to do in reality, but after several false-starts and missteps Ryou managed it, and he sighed in relief when the magic released him. The switch from seeing the same hieroglyphs and hallway he had been to one completely different would have caused him to cheer if he'd had the energy, but as he didn't he instead smiled as he started walking down this new corridor - that was thankfully one that he recognized as being located between the lounge and the bathroom.

With no hesitation the whitette turned and headed straight towards the lounge, strongly repressing the urge to cry in relief when he stepped into the room and saw the lobster-red girl sitting on one of the couches. He honestly couldn't tell if the ice bath had helped or not, but she didn't look nearly as furious as she had the last time he's seen her. That was good news for him at least, he thought with a tired smile, walking over to sit on the couch across from Molly.

Ryou glanced at the table between them, noting that the trash from their short meal was gone, leaving on the partial drink behind, and he honestly couldn't bring himself to be worried about it. After all, there weren't any trash cans around and he was reasonably sure that they wouldn't be able to take the trash with them when they left, so if some monster decided to take care of it that was fine by him.

Sighing in relief as he sank down into the soft cushions and looked across at Molly, but before he could say anything, the blonde girl spoke up, "So I fell through a trapdoor and had to follow a floating ball of light to get out, what about you?"

And there really wasn't anything he could say to that aside from, "Magical trap designed to catch trespassers and thieves." and they exchanged looks of complete understanding before they sighed in unison and let their shoulders slump as they were finally able to relax after their ordeals.

After a minute Molly spoke up again, her voice somewhat subdued, "Hey, I just wanted to say sorry about freaking out earlier...and throwing that stuff at you."

"It's fine," Ryou told the girl, smiling reassuringly as he added, "Now that I think back on it, it was pretty funny, actually."

That startled a giggle out of Molly, and the wizard-in-training said thoughtfully, "The whole thing really was hilarious, wasn't it? The entire misunderstanding, I mean." Now that Molly thought back on it, especially after her experience with the trapdoor, she thought it was really, really funny, and after several minutes of stifling giggles she couldn't take it anymore and burst out laughing.

Ryou joined in a moment later, glad to see the tears of mirth gathered at the corners of Molly's blue eyes, and he himself was glad to release his pent-up tension and frustration. If both their laughter was tinged with just the slightest hint of hysteria, well, they were both too busy laughing to notice, and he laughed even harder at the thought until he was practically doubled over while sitting. High-pitched giggles and outright guffaws filled the room, and the torches on the walls seemed to flicker with interest, but again, neither Molly or Ryou noticed the movement.

Wiping away the spots of moisture from his own brown eyes, Ryou smiled over at Molly as his laughter began to abate, leaving him gasping for breath and his ribs faintly aching. Molly returned his smile with a grin of her own, the expression stretching practically from ear to ear as she scrubbed the wetness from her cheeks and tried to get her giggles under control without much success.

The eighteen year-old duelist was glad to see that the previously tense mood had been thoroughly broken and Molly distracted from her experience, but that didn't mean he didn't have some thoughts on what had happened.

Going by what little Molly had said before they had started laughing, Ryou was pretty sure that a monster had helped her find her way back to the lounge. There were plenty of monster cards that featured 'floating balls of light', never mind the amount of magic cards that sported the same, but Ryou was fairly certain that Molly had encountered the Mystical Shine Ball. He'd faced the creature in practice duels with Tea before, and it certainly fit Molly's description. And then there was what had happened to him - in his experience flickering shadows with no reasonable explanation were rarely good things, but this time the occurrence had been helpful. Again, there were a lot of cards that had something to do with shadows and darkness, but when he thought about it only one monster immediately stood out (and now he remembered why that shadow from before had looked familiar!)...why it would be helping him, he hadn't the faintest idea, but he wasn't about to look a gift monster in the mouth.

Their laughter gradually fading, both young adults sat more comfortably on their respective couches, wordlessly taking small sips of the remaining soda, and eventually Ryou spoke up, "Molly, I think it would be a good idea if we left pretty soon,"

The young blonde was startled since, booby-traps aside, where they were was the safest place they could be at the moment, since there was a working bathroom and running water, and they were safe from the sun. She thought it would be pretty reckless to just leave when they didn't have a guarantee that there was another place to find shelter anywhere around, so she told Bakura exactly that.

"I know, but we're out of food and we can't survive on water alone," Ryou admitted and pointed out, raising a very good reason why they should leave and explore the area.

Molly had to admit that the white-haired man had a good point, but she was loathe to leave the only place that offered any protection in the weird place they were in. She was _sure_ that they were in the NeverNever, but that realm was vast and she had no clue what part of it they were in, so the best option was to stay put and hope that time didn't pass too differently between where they were and the human world so Harry would figure out she was missing and find her and Bakura quickly.

Of course she couldn't possibly present that as an argument for staying where they were, because for all that Bakura had seemed to be taking everything in stride there was still a limit to what vanilla mortals could believe and accept (Miss Murphy was the exception, of course). She also couldn't mention if they went outside they ran the risk of encountering that Diabound creature again, or another monster altogether. Her blasting rod had been destroyed, so there was little to nothing she could do to defend them if something like that happened.

She was brought out of her thoughts when Ryou continued talking, "If we go up to the exit we found earlier and take a look around, maybe we'll get lucky and see some sign of civilization, or at least a clue as to which way we should start walking." Ryou didn't think it was likely, because the Shadow Realm was a gigantic place and the chances of them seeing something like that practically zero...but stranger things had happened, so it wasn't a complete lie.

Ryou was actually hoping that if they wandered around enough they might stumble on a portal back to their world or, failing that, find a friendly monster who might be willing to make them one (it could happen!).

The wizard-in-training mulled over Ryou's words, unable to find a logical argument that she could use with a regular person to convince them to stay put, and so nodded in defeat. When Ryou smiled, she had to say sternly, feeling like she was channeling her parents, "_Just_ to the exit! If we don't see anything around, we come back here and think of a different plan, or if I think of something between now and when we head up there we'll try that first, okay?"

She sighed in relief when Ryou nodded in agreement, and then winced when her sunburn chose then to sting and remind her of its presence. "I am not looking forward to this..." she groaned, gingerly lying down on the low couch to try and get some sleep, giving up on finding a position that didn't aggravate her burn before she even tried.

Ryou could only offer the suffering blonde a sympathetic look and an apologetic shrug.

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><p><em>Author's Note: I might be a little out of practice writing these characters, but I'm hoping that I managed it well enough that their personalities weren't radically different from the previous chapters. :P Also, the votes came in and Molly's eyes are officially blue now! Thanks for everyone who answered that question in their reviews. Please read and review and tell me what you thought! As always, constructive criticism is welcome!<em>


	11. Chapter 11

_Author's Note: This is basically a thank-goodness-we're-all-okay chapter, and it's a bit rushed, but I hope you all enjoy it just the same._

**Shadows of Anarchy**

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><p>Even before they stepped out into the somewhat open area of the entrance hall, giant burning brazier and all, Molly just <em>knew<em> that their decision to explore the outside of the ancient structure was going to end badly. She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach like she'd had that one time she had decided to use magic to try and change the color of her hair.

Thinking about the results of that particular experiment still made her shudder. And the memory of her teacher's laughter upon seeing said results certainly didn't help anything.

Of course, she couldn't tell Bakura that, since he probably wouldn't think 'a bad feeling' was reason enough not to go out into the entrance hall. Instead, she took a deep breath, ignored the stings of her sunburn at the action, and followed after the white-haired teen as he exited the relative security of the building. She had to blink a few times to clear the spots from her vision at the sudden change from torchlight to sunlight, but she looked around cautiously as Bakura started walking towards the far end of the hall.

Molly breathed a silent sigh of relief that there was no trace of the monster they had encountered the first time they had been there, and her shoulders relaxed minutely as some of her tension drained away. So far so good, she told herself, and with that thought took another, more thorough look around, curious despite herself about this new part of their shelter. She hadn't had a chance to get a good look at it earlier due to the encounter with Diabound and her blasting rod exploding, so she took the opportunity while she had it.

For his part, Ryou walked straight to the other end of the hall, ignoring the pillars/obelisks lining the pseudo-room in favor of seeing whether his guess of where they were was correct or not. When he reached the end and looked out, he didn't know whether to curse or feel smug that it was, because his being right about their being in the Shadow Realm _and_ in the Mausoleum of the Emperor opened up a whole new set of problems that he and Molly would have to deal with. Sure he'd already pretty much guessed they were in the Shadow Realm, but it would have been nice to have been wrong.

The former holder of the Millennium Ring had to admit, the view from the top of the Mausoleum was pretty nice, especially in the light of the setting sun (he was glad they'd timed their trip outside so well - he didn't want to make Molly's sunburn any worse than it already was). The sprawling sand dunes fairly glowed an array of colors, most noticeably shades of orange and red, the wind gusting over them and creating the illusion that he was looking not at sand, but at a sea that extended all the way to the edge of the horizon. Heat hazes wafted up from the hot sands, dancing and twisting above the ground, sometimes almost but not quite forming definite images in faint mirages that fell apart before they could be completed.

It was breathtaking, and Ryou spent several minutes appreciating the sight before he reluctantly turned his attention back to more important matters.

He spared a moment to look down at the great stairway leading up to where he was standing. As it turned out, the summit of the Mausoleum was about at the height of one of the larger pyramids back in the human world, and he was grateful for that height as it meant he could see much, much farther than he would have been able to at ground-level. He looked around carefully, searching for any sign of civilization or some sort of clue as to what direction to go in order to reach civilization.

When he didn't find anything after almost ten minutes of searching (although he had taken a short break to glance back at Molly, who had been unnaturally silent, though thankfully she was alright, just engrossed in looking at some of the carvings on the obelisks), Ryou was honestly about ready to give up for the time being and head back inside. Setting sun or not, the heat of the desert hung on with both hands until night completely fell, the temperature along with it.

The whitette had turned almost completely around and was contemplating trying to find a way to look behind the Mausoleum when something caught his attention from the corner of his eye. Turning to the left to get a better look at it, his dark eyes squinting as he tried to make out details, he was forced to give up as what had gotten his attention continued being just a far away black dot against the sands. He promptly decided he needed a second opinion.

"Molly? I think you better come take a look at this," She looked up when she heard the older teen's call, and she hurried over to where he was standing, gathering her will in case something was wrong. Molly was understandably relieved when it turned out there was no danger, although she unashamedly gaped when she saw how high up they were and the true shape of their 'sanctuary' occurred to her. She paled, turning her red face into more of a dark pink, because Stars and Stones they had been staying in a glorified crypt.

The blonde wizard-in-training was in a state of stunned horror for almost six whole minutes before Bakura gently poked her on the arm, snapping her out of it in exchange for a disproportionate amount of pain coming from the poked spot. She flinched, muttering a quiet 'ow' as she restrained herself from instinctively rubbing the hurting area, knowing from experience that that would only make it worse. Instead, she focused her attention on Bakura, obediently looking in the direction he indicated after smiling slightly at his apologetic look. Like Bakura had, unknown to her, she squinted at the distant black dot, trying to figure out what it was.

It was full night and both of them were shivering by the time they gave up, the black dot having become indistinguishable from the surrounding desert in the darkness. Molly and Ryou quickly retreated back inside the Mausoleum, Molly's horror at staying in a tomb outweighed by the need to get out of the cold. They made it back to lounge easily, sighing in relieved unison at the noticeable difference in temperature, the lit torches around the room serving well as both sources of light _and_ heat.

In unspoken agreement, Ryou and Molly sat down on their previously claimed couches, getting comfortable before Ryou spoke, "Well, I suppose it's safe to say that there's at least _something_ besides us and this building in this desert, going by the black dot we couldn't identify,"

"Yeah, and it wasn't moving, I don't think." Molly agreed, her sinking feeling returning with a vengeance, and she just knew that Bakura was about to say something she wasn't going to like.

Ryou smiled and confirmed her suspicions, "Well then, what do you say tomorrow morning we set out and try and find out what that black dot is? Even factoring in the fact that we could probably only see it because of this place's height, it can't be that far away."

Molly immediately shook her head, "No way! How do we even know it wasn't just some kind of rock formation or something? I don't want to get caught out in the heat of the day because of a rock!"

"But it could just a easily be a building," Ryou argued, leaning forward as he tried to emphasize his point, "And if it is a building, then we might be able to either take shelter there or even run into someone who might be able to help us get home!" Okay, that last one was likely a lie, but they couldn't stay in the Mausoleum forever.

The dubious look on Molly's face clearly showed that she didn't believe the lie one bit, and she quickly shot back, "Who knows what kind of animals live in this desert? For all we know there could be sand sharks!" She had once seen the creatures in an old episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and they had terrified her. She certainly didn't want to meet the things in real life!

"Sand sharks?" Bakura parroted, blinking in confusion at the seemingly unrelated issue, before he paused, thinking back and trying to remember if there were any cards like that. He came blank on any shark-like monsters that lived in a desert, but he felt a chill run down his spine as he recalled that there were a lot of desert-dwelling monsters that were a great deal worse. He probably shouldn't mention those, even if Molly didn't know what Duel Monsters* was...

...Wait, his deck! He still had his deck with him!

It was like a lightbulb turned on in his head as he remembered slipping his deck into the case on his belt before he'd gone out to get something to eat and everything went spiraling out of control. His deck normally wouldn't be or much use, but since he was in the Shadow Realm, his deck could make the difference between life and death. He hadn't tried summoning anything either in the human world or the world of shadows, but he remembered how it was done. Hopefully he'd be able to make that attempt _before_ either his or Molly's lives were in danger, but he wasn't going to bet on that.

Bringing himself out of his thoughts, Ryou looked at Molly, his mind whirling as he mentally ran through the cards in his deck even as he told her, "At any rate, we should at least try to go see what that black dot was. I'll tell you what, if you really don't want to go out onto the sand, I'll go alone and then come back and tell you what it is."

Molly hesitated, not because she doubted Bakura would come back for her after investigating, but because she didn't know if Bakura would even be able to make it to where the black dot was. The sand could hide any number of dangers, sand sharks aside, the least of which being scorpions, snakes or even quicksand. She really didn't like the thought of letting Bakura, who was her only friend in this strange place, go exploring on his own, but she also didn't want to go out with him, and not just because of her sunburn.

The blonde was mentally torn, and she was so busy turning the options over in her head that she didn't notice the minute flash of understanding cross Bakura's face as he saw her inner turmoil. Finally, she had to nod in defeat as she muttered, "Okay, you can go alone, but I'll stay at the top of the stairs and start screaming at you if I see something dangerous before you reach the black dot." The last was part warning, part reassurance for both Bakura and herself. She hated to admit it, but without her blasting rod she wouldn't be much help even if Bakura was attacked by a desert creature.

"That's fine," Ryou agreed, relaxing now that Molly didn't seem in the mood to argue with his decision to investigate the anomaly they'd seen. "We should get some rest," He added, and suited actions to words by laying down on his couch, stretching himself out and sighing as his muscles flexed. He hoped his inner clock woke him up a bit before dawn, but with the Shadow Realm who knew how much it was messed up (did the Shadow Realm even have time zones? He had no clue).

Molly huffed, feeling a bit like one of those toy ducks on strings with wheels, and she mentally swore that she was going to find some way to contribute to their search for a way back to Chicago. A good thing about being a wizard, she consoled herself, was that she healed fast, so her burn-reddened skin should already be healing, even if it didn't feel like it. She would check tomorrow in the bathroom before Bakura headed out and she kept watch for him.

Feeling somewhat better, Molly gently reclined on her couch and sighed, trying her best to relax and get some rest before dawn came and Bakura put his crazy plan into action.

She tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her gut and Empty Night she hoped that she was just being paranoid...

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><p><em>*...Do I really need to explain this one?<em>

_Author's Note: So they now have a plan and the Shadow Realm might be making Molly paranoid...or that might just be me, LOL. ;P Things will definitely be getting moving in the next chapter! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! Read and review and tell me what you think! As always, constructive criticism is welcome!_


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